All in the worst possible taste

From tiny beginnings, Viz went on to sell a million copies - and made characters such as the Fat Slags, Spoilt Bastard and Roger Mellie household names. William Cook looks at the Geordie comic, 25 years old this month.

Twenty-five years ago, three Geordie teenagers published 150 copies of a brand new comic. Priced 20p (30p for students), The Bumper Monster Christmas Special - all 12 pages of it - went on sale in a suburban pub in Newcastle upon Tyne. Within a few hours, they'd sold every copy. A decade later, Viz was selling more than a million copies per issue, outselling every magazine in Britain apart from The Radio Times, The TV Times and Reader's Digest. How did this tiny organ - as Viz stalwart Finbarr Saunders, famous for his double entendres, might put it - grow so big? And what's happened to it since?

Viz, a brilliant hybrid of punk fanzine and kids' comic, owes much of its success to a civil servant clerk called Chris Donald. When he, his 15-year-old brother Simon and schoolfriend Jim Brownlow published the first issue in November 1979, Chris was working as a wage mule for the DHSS. But even then it was clear that his talents weren't confined to administering National Insurance contributions. The comic strips he'd drawn at school had been a big hit in the playground (and the staff room); it was that behind-the-bike-sheds cheek that made Viz unique. It was full of the sort of stupid, crass and insensitive jokes you told at school, but until Chris Donald came along, nobody had dared to put them into print.

Like all the best editors, Chris also had a flair for spotting talent. His brother Simon drew many of the comic's funniest characters, including Johnny Fartpants and Sid the Sexist, while Jim Brownlow's Paul Whicker The Tall Vicar was the original man behaving badly. Chris subsequently recruited Graham Dury (Spoilt Bastard), Simon Thorp (Student Grant) and Davey Jones (Roger Irrelevant) who draw most of the comic to this day. Like Chris, these three cartoonists are more trainspotters than hellraisers. Drawing comics is hard graft, and despite the outrageous content (or maybe even because of it) the atmosphere in the Viz office is and always has been almost monastically studious.

Throughout the 1980s, Viz bucked every media trend. Unlike most other magazines, it wasn't produced in London, yet it never tried to tone down its Geordie accent or hide its north east roots. And unlike virtually every other magazine, it didn't take itself remotely seriously. It didn't talk down to its readers, or try to cuddle up to them. In fact it treated them with unconcealed contempt. "The page you write and it's always shite," read the slogan on the letters page, but that didn't stop people writing in, and its idiotic Top Tips (supplied by readers and staff alike) became one of the highlights of the comic.

Until 1985, Viz was produced on an ad hoc basis, and during its first five years only 12 issues were published. It became a local phenomenon, selling thousands per issue in Newcastle alone. Copies started cropping up in record shops around the country, and after Chris wrote a speculative letter to Richard Branson, Virgin started publishing Viz nationwide. Produced bi-monthly, and placed in regular newsagents, circulation soon reached five figures, and when Virgin employee John Brown set up his own publishing company, and persuaded Viz to go with him, sales went through the roof.

Since the early 90s, readership has been in slow but steady decline, and although by any other standards the current six-figure circulation is still healthy, it's a fraction of what it was at its dizzy seven-figure peak. Yet Viz was never going to sell a million forever. "In the early days, it was probably the shock value that sold it as much as anything, but you can't shock people forever," says Graham Dury, who draws Viz favourites like the Fat Slags and Cockney Wanker. "You've got to make them laugh."

Possibly the comic's best known creation, the Fat Slags may seem like archetypal Geordies, but Graham Dury, who draws them, reckons they're from Nottingham. But the reason Sandra and Tracey are so popular is because their boozy, libidinous sisters can be found in every British city. The Guardian wasn't alone in criticising the strip, but not all Guardian readers agreed. "Viz shows women in a critical light, but it exposes its male characters in equally critical ways," wrote Ivy Garlitz from Felixstowe, in a persuasive letter to the paper. "For all its sexist comments (towards both sexes) it makes valid points about modern Britain."

A comparison of current and early issues confirms that Viz is still just as funny as it was in its heyday - if not funnier - and if it no longer seems so shocking, that's because everyone else has caught up. There are no secrets in publishing, and although none of Viz's insipid imitators ever made much impact, plenty of other publications now mimic its irreverent tone. Viz has become a victim of its own success.

Viz has always been mainly written for and read by young men. Back in the 1980s, there were precious few irreverent and funny magazines aimed at that market. The first lads mag, Loaded, didn't appear until 1994. Loaded's launch editor, James Brown, cited Viz as one of Loaded's main inspirations (he used to sell the comic in Leeds when he was a student). Loaded was of course nothing like Viz, but it did share some of the same schoolboy humour - and like Viz, its success spawned a rash of imitators.

Inevitably, some aspects of Viz have changed, especially in recent years. Chris Donald retired from the comic in 1999 (he now works part-time in a second-hand bookshop), and his brother Simon left last year to set up a TV writing partnership called Blissna (Geordiespeak for excellent) with fellow Viz cartoonist Alex Collier, creator of Viz modern classics like Tasha Slapper, Billy No Mates and Anna Reksik. Chris's greatest characters, Billy The Fish and Roger Mellie, are now drawn by Simon Thorp and Graham Dury, and even though, like Walt Disney cartoons, these strips remain remarkably faithful to their prototypes, it's telling that the three cartoonists who've left the comic are local lads who never went to college, while the three cartoonists who remain are outsiders with degrees. Viz is now a mainstream magazine rather than an underground fanzine, and even though its contents are as anarchic as ever, its glossy cover and conventional ads are a far cry from the early days.

Yet although Viz's circulation has dwindled, today its influence is everywhere. It started out parodying the tabloid papers. Today the tabloids read like parodies of Viz. It started out running adverts that sent up the products they were supposed to be promoting. Today you scarcely see an advert that isn't sending up itself. Viz has always been apolitical, even in the Thatcherite 1980s. Today, apolitical comedy isn't the exception, but the norm. In its own inimitable way, Viz has changed the sense of humour of the nation. Not bad for an obscure fanzine published from the proceeds of a dead-end desk job at the DHSS.

· William Cook is the author of The Silver Plated Jubilee - 25 Years of Viz (Boxtree).